DHS asks Supreme Court to reinstate overhauled immigration tool for midterms

The Trump administration urged the Supreme Court on Tuesday to restore the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) overhauled immigration verification system in time for the midterm elections.

“The district court has issued an indefensible order that threatens the integrity of upcoming elections,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote .

DHS’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) is used to determine eligibility for certain federal programs. DHS has made significant updates to the system after President Trump directed it to ensure election officials had appropriate access to verify their voters’ citizenship.

The changes connect SAVE to social security records and allow bulk queries. Sauer said the modified system had been processing more than a million requests each day and was making voter registration eligibility checks more efficient.

The administration brought the case to the justices after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit voted 2-1 on Friday to uphold a block on the overhaul. A judge had found it violated the Social Security Act and a federal privacy law.

It’s the latest election-related dispute to land on the Supreme Court’s emergency docket as the midterms approach. As the clock continues to tick down to November’s contests, the justices also are mulling efforts to restore a GOP-favored congressional map in Missouri and Trump’s mail-in voting restrictions .

Sauer argued the database overhaul is legal and the lower courts wrongly concluded the administration had forfeited its arguments. He also asserted the plaintiffs — organizations focused on voting and privacy issues — had no legal right to challenge the overhaul.

“The federal government, the States, and the public face irreparable harm from the court’s sudden upending of the updated system and from being required to return to an older, more cumbersome, and less reliable version of the system,” Sauer wrote in the filing.

The request heads to Chief Justice John Roberts, who, by default, handles emergency matters arising from the nation’s capital. He could also refer the case to the full court for a vote.